Donald Trump finally got a law passed.
After 12 years of failed attempts, New York State revised it’s Penal Code this week, with Governor Kathy Hochul signing the new law and declaring “Rape Is Rape,” expanding the technical legal definition of “rape” well beyond the old, parochial parameters of “vaginal penetration by a penis.”
And none of it could have been done, without a hand from Donald Trump–or, more accurately, a few of his teeny, chubby fingers and, what may or may not have been, a flaccid penis. The first jury of six men and three women in the May, 2023 E. Jean Carroll case vs. Trump, just didn’t want to touch that one.
Mere days after Trump was found guilty, again, this year, by yet another unanimous jury, for repeatedly sexually assaulting and defaming E. Jean Carroll to the tune of $83 million (on top of the $5 million he already lost to her) New York State moved its Rape Law into the 21st Century and into compliance with federal law, practice, and most modern law-enforcement definitions of rape.
The new law—which should, perhaps be named, “The Trump Middle Finger Rape Law,” broadens the definition of “Rape” to include nonconsensual anal, oral and vaginal sexual contact. That means that whether the perp forcibly uses his or her fingers, a sex toy, a baton or anything else, or his penis in any penetration of a vaginal, oral or anal opening—on a woman or a man—the sex offender is guilty of rape.
New York State’s new definition of rape makes it comport with Federal standards, including those of the FBI, whose Uniform Crime Reports define rape as:
“penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”
Ironically, that change in the FBI’s definition of what constituted rape, was made in 2012, during the tenure of then-FBI Director Robert Mueller.
New York’s new rape law is also consistent and with the practices of the Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network (RAINN), which operates the Department of Defense’s SAFE Helpline, and has working partnerships with over 1,000 local sexual assault service providers across the country.
In signing the new rape bill into law, Governor Hochul said that what happened under the old law was that “physical technicalities confuse jurors and humiliate survivors and create a legal grey area that defendants exploit.”
Which is precisely what the convicted sex offender Trump did in his first losing trial against E. Jean Carroll last May.
In describing Trump’s sexual attack on her, Carroll carefully told the Federal civil jury in 2023 that Trump forcibly inserted several fingers and his penis into her vagina, after pushing her up against a wall, and pulling down her tights. It was the same detailed description of rape she had repeatedly recounted for decades, under oath, and in print.
During that trial, the jury concluded, that Trump had “deliberately and forcibly penetrated Ms. Carroll’s vagina with his fingers, causing immediate pain and long lasting emotional and psychological harm,” findings which led to their $5 million judgment in Carroll’s favor, $2 million of which was awarded as compensatory damages because of the brutal sexual assault committed by Trump.
Yet, despite Carroll’s sworn testimony that he also penetrated her with his penis, the Jury, for some bizarre reason, found Trump’s penis to be no more than another one of his teeny fingers, dismissing Carroll’s under oath, first-person account, as if they were, somehow, in the Bergdorf’s dressing room watching the method of Trump’s sexual attack.
That distinction—between Trump’s chubby little fingers or his penis—under the old New York State Penal Law was enough for the sex offender to escape the previous “vaginal penetration by a penis” technical requirement for rape. The Jury just couldn’t tell Trump’s penis from his teeny fingers.
US District Court Senior Judge Lewis Kaplan—who saw and heard the exact same evidence in that first case–was outraged over the jury’s jerry-rigged verdict on the question of rape, and he said so, several times. Writing immediately following the 2023 verdict, Judge Kaplan said quite clearly:
“Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted makes clear, the jury found that Mr.Trump in fact did exactly that.” (Rape Ms. Carroll).
Judge Kaplan—who also presided over E. Jean Carroll’s just concluded second defamation case against Trump— declared that the jury in the first case, based their decision on, as Newsday reported (January 30, 2024):
“the narrow, technical meaning” of rape in New York penal law and that the verdict did not mean that Carroll “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”
In August, 2023, only a few months after Trump was convicted of being a sex offender, Judge Kaplan dismissed a defamation counter-claim by Trump against Carroll, where he whined that she defamed him by writing in a magazine article and later in her 2019 book, What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal, that Trump raped her.
USA Today, reporting this week (January 29, 2024) in a story entitled “Did Donald Trump Rape E. Jean Carroll? Here’s what a Jury and Judge Said,” questioned why the jury accepted only part of E. Jean Carroll’s story of Trump’s criminal sexual attack on her:
“The jurors weren’t required to explain why, under the definitions they were given, they concluded Trump sexually abused Carroll but were less convinced he raped her.
However, in analyzing the jury’s verdict, Judge Kaplan said Carroll’s testimony about penetration by fingers was more “repeated and clear.” She said she “couldn’t see anything that was happening,” although she could feel it, describing the pain from his finger in particular. She testified that she wasn’t sure if he got his penis fully or only partially inside her.”
In Kaplan’s judgment, “full” or “partial” penetration wasn’t the issue: any penetration of the vagina by Trump’s penis, no matter how small, was enough to trigger the definition of rape, even under the old law. If the jury did not believe Carroll’s sworn testimony of penile penetration, then why did they award her $2 million in compensatory damages for the sexual assault? As a consolation prize?
As excruciatingly painful as it was for E. Jean Carroll to experience this horror initially, and then to have to relive it over and over during her trials and many times after, under the old, out-dated New York State rape law, the serious felony of rape came down to the question of whether or not Trump’s penis could be confused for his teeny, chubby fingers.
Under the New York State’s new “Trump Middle Finger Rape Law,” penis size and depth or means of penetration is no longer, thankfully, a matter for a jury to measure.